Still Small Point

I awoke in the middle of the night and found it hard to go back to sleep, partly because it is hard to sleep propped up on pillows so that a surgical drain stays in place, partly because my mind is filled with reeling thoughts from my reading on church leadership from my D.Min. classes, from a conversation with a young colleague who finds that being sole pastor of a small struggling church can be isolating, from concerns of nestlings that have difficulty leaving the nest, from senseless shootings in DC only one block from our beloved AnnaMaria, and lets face it, from awareness of my impending 60th birthday next week.

Does that single run-on sentence give a small sense of a world that keeps swirling around making it difficult to find peace?

Years ago, in a novel by Dorothy Sayers, a character writes eight lines of a sonnet ending with an image of a spinning world asleep on its axis at a “heart of rest”, but cannot find the right turning for a concluding sestet, and then finds the perfect words written in her notebook by someone to whom she owes her life but who makes no claims upon her. Building on her words and images, he turns the sonnet to a re-sounding, re-echoing heart of music, asleep.

A still center. A still small turning. A still small point. In the work I have done over the last year using Parker Palmer's Courage to Lead© format, one of the important images for me has been that of holding a small bird cupped in my hands. In this discernment work, that small bird represents the person who is the focus of a clearness committee. It's not up to me to launch the bird into flight, or to dissect its abilities. My work is simply to hold it in my hands, keeping my focus on the person, asking a few open and honest questions.

Tonight as I found it difficult to return to the embrace of somnolence, I saw that small bird in my hands as myself in the hands of God's Spirit. God will not force me to fly before being ready. God asks of me some probing, open, honest questions that allow me the privilege of taking time to see myself more deeply, and that allow me to know I am held in a loving, trustworthy embrace. I don't know that sleep will return tonight. That doesn't really matter. What matters is the still small turning, the still small point of God's hands cupped around me in the midst of a swirling universe. I am held. I am loved. I am able to fly when ready.    

Luke 12.7:

But even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.